A note about head shape in mummies

A few months ago I scanned a 3,000 mummy, as described in my earlier post. This is just a quick note about his perspicuously elongated skull shape, known as dolicocephy (elongated head).

First, here's the profile of Neskhons (the mummy I scanned):

Next, here's a shot of two other mummies:

(photo (c) National Geographic)

You can see the obvious resemblance in all three skulls. Now here's the kicker. The bottom-left mummy is King Tut. The one on the right comes from a scan in 2007 of another mummy found in 2007. That mummy was speculated to be the body of Tut's missing father Akhenaten -- based in large part on the observation that the skull looks roughly alike. From the National Geographic news report:

"The CT scan supports the idea that the mummy is Akhenaten by revealing it as a male between the ages of 25 and 40 who shares many physical similarities with Tut—assuming Akhenaten was Tut's father, as some experts believe. The mystery mummy's strange elongated, egg-shaped skull, called dolichocephalic, is strikingly similar to Tutankhamun's."

Unfortunately, that alone is poor evidence, and here's why. Tut lived 350 years before Neskhons, and yet the skull shape is shared: it was common among the Egyptian royals. Therefore, one cannot draw a meaningful conclusions that two mummies are likely to be father and son simply based on an argument that their skulls look alike!

Francis Crick, one of the premier biologists of the 20th century, passed away July 28, 2004, in San Diego. On his 88th birthday last June, I brought him chocolates and spent the day with him in his home in La Jolla.